By Bernard Rowan
I'm looking forward to New Year this year. I don't mean the Western calendar New Year, which has passed. I mean Seollal. It's Feb. 11-13 with New Year itself two days before Valentine's Day.
As I inch closer to my 57th year on this Earth, I begin to think of Seollal in the Korean, Chinese, and Asian manner as a better new year's rite and celebration. American New Year is about the passing from one year to the next, having a party, and setting resolutions for personal development, perhaps. It's a time when many find regrets.
In other words, it's synced to an individualistic culture with varying hues of celebration and self-reflection. Nothing wrong with that, but it is subjectivist or egocentric. Large groups of folks imbibing, eating, and shooting fireworks isn't the most suitable face for commemorating the past and charting the future. Dieting and self-help businesses take on many customers at this time of year.
Within Korean New Year, the practice of "sebae" or bowing to elders strikes me as something more significant and meaningful. I'm going to start encouraging it in my family. I look more to bow than to receive bows. As I understand it, "bowing to one's elders" marks a way of recognizing the fact we're standing on the shoulders of our parents, grandparents, and the generations before them. It's a sign of respect for those from whom we've come and in whose names we carry our families and ourselves forward.
Americans aren't partial to kowtowing, as the crude translation of the verb implies subservience and hierarchical piety. I'm afraid the importance of bonds between seniors to juniors doesn't dawn on many people. American and European cultures do respect others, including one's elders, but the intergenerational quality is ever less in vogue and muted. Many children call their parents by their first names. Bowing seems mysterious, silly, and from a bygone era.
But sebae isn't a tribute to bowing and formality within families. My father passed several years ago, and I think a good deal about him at New Year. I talk to him, in times bad and good. I consider this a part of my lasting love for him, even though he has passed to heaven. I also have similar ties with other departed members of my family.
I of course keep and value relations with my mother and other living seniors and juniors in a similar and different way. I plan to have a little gallery of pictures of my family elders and bow to them with my family. I enjoyed wonderful times and learned so much from my grandparents, great-aunts, and great-uncles. I'll add some pictures of my Korean teachers, mentors, and seniors too. They deserve an impetus to living memory.
New Year is a time to realize that one carries forward membership in a family. We affirm and change that family's bonds and meaning in some mixture. The young understandably see a horizon with no limits to do so, but I am beginning to learn better. I seek to instill an estimate of New Year as a map for the quest that is a family's life. Bowing summons energy and support from those living and departed for the next leg of the journey.
In this COVID-19 era and war, we can't properly meet and embrace, or share a meal. We can meet, online or by phone. That's consoling. Families have suffered due to the inability to congregate and share times good and bad.
A family may conduct formal family rites ("charye"), spend three days in observation of New Year, or wear traditional clothing. All are wonderful aspects of Seollal. Many families do keep family customs, rituals, and celebrations with the spirit of recalling and reviving family. The Catholic Church has created a rite for such occasions.
It's the case that Korea is one of the strongest continuing cultures to value and practice a 21st century form of Confucianism in Seollal. I've learned a lot from learning about family values in the Korean context. I'm learning how to adapt them to my life outside Korea these days. "Saehae bok mani badeusipsio!"
Bernard Rowan (browan10@yahoo.com) is associate provost for contract administration and professor of political science at Chicago State University. He is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University.
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As I inch closer to my 57th year on this Earth, I begin to think of Seollal in the Korean, Chinese, and Asian manner as a better new year's rite and celebration. American New Year is about the passing from one year to the next, having a party, and setting resolutions for personal development, perhaps. It's a time when many find regrets.
In other words, it's synced to an individualistic culture with varying hues of celebration and self-reflection. Nothing wrong with that, but it is subjectivist or egocentric. Large groups of folks imbibing, eating, and shooting fireworks isn't the most suitable face for commemorating the past and charting the future. Dieting and self-help businesses take on many customers at this time of year.
Within Korean New Year, the practice of "sebae" or bowing to elders strikes me as something more significant and meaningful. I'm going to start encouraging it in my family. I look more to bow than to receive bows. As I understand it, "bowing to one's elders" marks a way of recognizing the fact we're standing on the shoulders of our parents, grandparents, and the generations before them. It's a sign of respect for those from whom we've come and in whose names we carry our families and ourselves forward.
Americans aren't partial to kowtowing, as the crude translation of the verb implies subservience and hierarchical piety. I'm afraid the importance of bonds between seniors to juniors doesn't dawn on many people. American and European cultures do respect others, including one's elders, but the intergenerational quality is ever less in vogue and muted. Many children call their parents by their first names. Bowing seems mysterious, silly, and from a bygone era.
But sebae isn't a tribute to bowing and formality within families. My father passed several years ago, and I think a good deal about him at New Year. I talk to him, in times bad and good. I consider this a part of my lasting love for him, even though he has passed to heaven. I also have similar ties with other departed members of my family.
I of course keep and value relations with my mother and other living seniors and juniors in a similar and different way. I plan to have a little gallery of pictures of my family elders and bow to them with my family. I enjoyed wonderful times and learned so much from my grandparents, great-aunts, and great-uncles. I'll add some pictures of my Korean teachers, mentors, and seniors too. They deserve an impetus to living memory.
New Year is a time to realize that one carries forward membership in a family. We affirm and change that family's bonds and meaning in some mixture. The young understandably see a horizon with no limits to do so, but I am beginning to learn better. I seek to instill an estimate of New Year as a map for the quest that is a family's life. Bowing summons energy and support from those living and departed for the next leg of the journey.
In this COVID-19 era and war, we can't properly meet and embrace, or share a meal. We can meet, online or by phone. That's consoling. Families have suffered due to the inability to congregate and share times good and bad.
A family may conduct formal family rites ("charye"), spend three days in observation of New Year, or wear traditional clothing. All are wonderful aspects of Seollal. Many families do keep family customs, rituals, and celebrations with the spirit of recalling and reviving family. The Catholic Church has created a rite for such occasions.
It's the case that Korea is one of the strongest continuing cultures to value and practice a 21st century form of Confucianism in Seollal. I've learned a lot from learning about family values in the Korean context. I'm learning how to adapt them to my life outside Korea these days. "Saehae bok mani badeusipsio!"
Bernard Rowan (browan10@yahoo.com) is associate provost for contract administration and professor of political science at Chicago State University. He is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University.
